CeBIT 2003. ATI

The press conference was opened by Peter Edinger, ATI's Vide President
in Europe.

Before disclosing the future plans Peter touched upon the summits reached.
ATI's most significant achievement in the 3D sphere was Radeon 9700 which
got the title of the fastest graphics chip of that time.

Radeon 9700 Pro got a lot of new features, and the bright slide "Radeon
9700 Pro Did It First" emphasized significance of its advent.

After that they demonstrated an impressive list of games supporting or
going to support all the might of Radeon 9700 Pro due to DirectX 9 or OGL-2.

Beside the technical achievements ATI also spoke about its marketing success.
According to the company, in 2003 the demand for their products will be
stably growing in Europe. The slide below looks a bit too optimistic but
I couldn't help showing it to you.

Such success was achieved primarily thanks to its partners: Gigabyte, FIC,
Sapphire, Hercules, Connect3D.com, Yuan, HIS, CP Technology and Wistron.
NVIDIA's list can be much lengthier, but it's possible that exactly these
companies will help ATI climb higher summits of the graphics-card world.

ATI says that in comparison with 2001 the company itself produces fewer
finished boards than its partners. Like NVIDIA, it produces mostly components.

One of the key concepts at CeBIT 2003 was Intel Centrino, and at the press
conference held in Hannover during CeBIT 2003 ATI demonstrated two graphics
chips for portable PCs: MOBILITY RADEON 9600 and MOBILITY RADEON 7000.

The new chipset of RADEON IGP family features a 64-bit architecture, an
integrated graphics core supporting POWERPLAY technology and AGP 4X bus.
Also, it sports Fast Z-Clear 3D rendering technology, iDCT technology for
DVD quality optimization, two CRT or DVI-I outputs, TV-out etc. The chipset
is in a 596-pin BGA package, 35 x 35 mm, and back compatible with RADEON
IGP 340M chipset. Besides, there will be a compact version in the 718-pin
BGA case, 31 x 31mm. The company has already published a list of SO-DIMM
memory modules compatible with the new chipset; it covers solutions from
such companies as Infineon, Samsung, Nanya and Micron.

ATI states that DDR333 memory boosts performance by 25% as compared to
DDR266 used in IGP 340M.

Mobility Radeon 9200 was already reviewed at our site. At the press conference
the company stressed that this chip was positioned as a mainstream solution.

Mobility Radeon 9200 is almost the same as Radeon 9000: the same chip/memory
clock speeds - 250/200 MHz, 128 MB 128bit memory. However, Mobility Radeon
9200 supports AGP 8x (the main difference) and ATI's proprietary technology
PowerPlay developed to increase run-down time of a mobile computer at the
expense of more rational power consumption and redistribution of energy
resources.

A relatively new model of Radeon 9800 Pro is offered as the most efficient
solution. Below you can see that GeForceFX 5800 Ultra yields both to Radeon
9800 Pro and even to the slower Radeon 9700 Pro. I'm sure NVIDIA has similar
diagrams with a little bit different results, that is why I'll leave this
slide comments.

To prove trustworthiness of the diagrams ATI ran several demos where Radeon
9800 Pro outscored one of NVIDIA's most efficient chips GeForceFX 5800
Ultra in several parameters.

I hope that in the sphere of PC mobile solutions and high-performance 3D graphics
ATI will keep on moving ahead in great strides, and its announcements will become
true.